Rare election glitch: Machine out of calibration

NEWTON -- It happened at least once Tuesday -- a voter touches the box to vote for one candidate and the X appears for another candidate.

But there was no rigged ballot, said Marge McCabe, administrator for the Sussex County Board of Elections. "The machine was out of calibration."

The incident occurred Tuesday morning at the Colesville Fire Station, the polling place for voters from Wantage Districts 1 and 5.

The voter was John Nuss, a former township committeeman and mayor, who said he tried a couple of times to vote for a candidate in the state Senate race, but when he touched the stylus to that box, his previous vote in the gubernatorial race changed.

"I did it a couple of times, then called over a poll worker," Nuss said Wednesday. "The worker tried it and got the same result."

He said he was told it appeared the machine needed to be re-calibrated and was taken to vote on a different machine where he completed his ballot without problems.

McCabe said the Sussex County voting machines all have a touch-screen surface, which is matched up to the position of the boxes next to a candidate's name. In the case of the machine in Wantage, the screen was out of calibration, meaning the machine misread when Nuss placed the stylus.

A technician from the Board of Elections was called to the scene and reset the machine. Once re-calibrated, it was placed back into service.

McCabe said that before any of the voting machines records and stores a ballot, the voter is shown a screen with all their choices and must verify that those choices are correct.

Nuss said he was told a second machine at the polling place was also not acting properly, but McCabe said the issue with the computer which Nuss was using was the only reported voting machine issue on Tuesday.

She said a reported power surge at a polling station in Green froze a voting machine there while a voter was using it.

She said the machine was rebooted by poll workers and the voter completed the ballot.

The re-calibration of the Wantage machine was not unusual and occurs a couple of times each election day.

And, McCabe said, every polling machine in operation on Election Day is normally re-calibrated twice during the day as part of a regular routine.

There is a team of 10 technicians on duty, and each one has an assigned route, which they travel at least twice, checking each machine in each polling place.

The check includes viewing the machine's time and number of voters, to match up with the paperwork kept by the poll workers; checking to ensure the security seals on each machine have not been tampered with; and a routine re-calibration of each machine.

As part of the process after the election, the technicians' written reports are verified by the internal checks built into each of the electronic voting machines. Those checks include when they were recalibrated, when a test run was done as well as recording the number of voters and the number of votes recorded on each ballot.

The machine does not, however, have any way of recording the identity of the individual voter.

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There were also 104 provisional ballots cast at the county's polling places on Tuesday.

Those paper ballots are filled out by a voter when there is an issue, such as records indicating the voter was mailed an absentee ballot, or had moved within the county but not reported the change of address.

In those cases, the provisional ballot is sealed in an envelope, and that envelope is then sealed in a second envelope with the voter's information.

If there was not a vote at another location or a mailed-in ballot, the sealed ballot is placed in a pile to be opened and counted by election board employees once the polls close.

McCabe said there were 43 ballots from people who had requested and had mailed to them, an absentee ballot.

"Usually, it's that they forgot to fill it out in time," she said. Mailed-in ballots must be received by the board by the close of voting on Election Day.

The remaining 61 provisional ballots were "in-county changes," from people who had moved within the county and showed up at their former polling place, or they were at the correct location but their registration had not caught up with the poll books.

There was just one instance where a Superior Court judge was called upon to make a decision on voting status, she said.

In that case, a woman injured her back on Monday and, through her daughter, requested an absentee ballot. The judge decided and one was provided to the daughter, who returned the completed ballot later in the day.

Bruce A. Scruton can also be contacted on Twitter: @brucescrutonNJH or by phone: 973-383-1224.